Kalk stirrer placement

[Johnseye]

I have a 40g reservoir of rodi water in my basement for ATO that's pumped up to the first floor with a Spectrapure UPLC II peristaltic pump. I've been adding kalk to that reservoir for about a year. I wanted to add a kalk stirrer to see if I could get more consistency from the kalk. I don't have room for the stirrer near the sump so the only place I can put it in line is where the ATO reservoir is in the basement. Anyone have experience with either pushing or pulling water through a stirrer that is not located next to the sump? It seems that the stirrer designs are for the water to overflow from the stirrer chamber into the sump.

 

[sixpackgarage]

I have the TLF Kalk stirrer hanging off the back of my tank. Works great. My Tunze 3155 ATO pushes water through it just fine.

 

[tkeracer619]

Stirrers generally need to gravity drain to the sump.

I use an aquamedic 1000 and it cannot be used how you describe.

You could likely build one using a magnetic stirrer. I'm not a huge fan of the units that use a pump to stir the slurry.

 

[Johnseye]

Stirrers generally need to gravity drain to the sump.

I use an aquamedic 1000 and it cannot be used how you describe.

You could likely build one using a magnetic stirrer. I'm not a huge fan of the units that use a pump to stir the slurry.

This is what I'm finding. I won't use a pump reactor, I'd rather keep putting the kalk in my reservoir. Problem with putting it in the reservoir is it never gets stirred unless I go in and manually mix it. Supposedly the kalk saturates the water, but if that's the case then why are there even stirrers?

 

[RocketEngineer]

Stirrers are used when folks don't want to mix kalk in their ATO container for some reason. In my case, my ATO container is fish tank hidden next to my couch. The problem is the CAT who can get into said fish tank. I don't want her getting into kalk so I use a reactor next to my sump.

With an ATO container remotely located, I would guess you could place a solid lid on the container without an issue. If that's the case, I would just mix in more then enough kalk to saturate what's in the container and then place the ATO tube up off the bottom slightly. No need for a reactor if you don't need one. KISS.

 

[Sk8r]

I wish you luck with it. I had no end of expensive trouble with said device (which I found so unreliable I felt I couldn't sell it: I tossed it), and find that one stir when I put new water into the reservoir does it for me. I wonder if you might just need to use a vinegar addition to increase the kalk dissolution. You might ask about that in Chemistry to see if it might work for you: it's a step I've never needed to take.

 

[Johnseye]

I wish you luck with it. I had no end of expensive trouble with said device (which I found so unreliable I felt I couldn't sell it: I tossed it), and find that one stir when I put new water into the reservoir does it for me. I wonder if you might just need to use a vinegar addition to increase the kalk dissolution. You might ask about that in Chemistry to see if it might work for you: it's a step I've never needed to take.

I'm hesitant about adding vinegar as I don't want to create an imbalance or more problems. I've been running kalk out of the res and supplementing remaining alk/calc requirements by dosing. I just see alk/calc levels bounce between around 8 - 8.5 and think it has something to do with the timing of the ATO/kalk. My hope was a stirrer leveled it out some.

 

[zachts]

I'm hesitant about adding vinegar as I don't want to create an imbalance or more problems. I've been running kalk out of the res and supplementing remaining alk/calc requirements by dosing. I just see alk/calc levels bounce between around 8 - 8.5 and think it has something to do with the timing of the ATO/kalk. My hope was a stirrer leveled it out some.

That's a pretty small deviation and yes, it probably has to do with inconsistancy in evaporation and therefore the rate the Kalk is being added by your ATO. you could add a small fan to the sump to increase evap and that may help level things out a little, also you can set the ATO on a timer so it doesn't dose all at once as long as your sump can handle a little swing in water level. You'd have the same issue with swings from a reactor unless it is not being used as the main ato (IE setting it up on a separate pump on a slow drip that replaces less than the evap rate and topping off with plain RODI) Same could be done from your ATO/Kalk reservoir. Keeping it simple is best though.

 

[Johnseye]

That's a pretty small deviation and yes, it probably has to do with inconsistancy in evaporation and therefore the rate the Kalk is being added by your ATO. you could add a small fan to the sump to increase evap and that may help level things out a little, also you can set the ATO on a timer so it doesn't dose all at once as long as your sump can handle a little swing in water level. You'd have the same issue with swings from a reactor unless it is not being used as the main ato (IE setting it up on a separate pump on a slow drip that replaces less than the evap rate and topping off with plain RODI) Same could be done from your ATO/Kalk reservoir. Keeping it simple is best though.

Already have a fan in the sump. If I could put the stirrer inline with my reservoir and ATO then it would be worth it. Otherwise I'll just continue adding kalk to the res. Tough to dial in the alk. It swings like clockwork. I bought a new peristaltic pump which will connect to my Apex. With that I will know for sure if it's the kalk.

 

[zachts]

Already have a fan in the sump. If I could put the stirrer inline with my reservoir and ATO then it would be worth it. Otherwise I'll just continue adding kalk to the res. Tough to dial in the alk. It swings like clockwork. I bought a new peristaltic pump which will connect to my Apex. With that I will know for sure if it's the kalk.

You may (or possibly already do) also notice some swings from day to night which is not uncommon and why many using kalk with ATO or with a reactor only run it during the night hours when corals are using O2 and releasing CO2 which will drop the Alk and pH in a tank somewhat. But a minor daily deviation of less the 1.0 isn't a huge deal as it happens very slow in most systems. At a change of 0.5 you really don't have much to worry about.

I never bother to look at small swings over the day(check ocassionally to ensure nothing is getting out of whack, but always test during the day for determining a base line to keep things relatively stable).